More Coverage

Eli Ankou showed up Sunday morning at Texans headquarters, in a dry area of flood-ravaged Houston, not even 24 hours after being waived.

The rookie interior defensive lineman from Ottawa hoped to sign paperwork that would land him on the NFL team’s practice squad, after working his butt off in vain for four months to land a spot on the Houston Texans’ 53-man roster heading into the start of the regular season this week.

Then Ankou got the news that more than a thousand newly cut NFL hopefuls on Sunday were desperate to hear, but didn’t. He’d been claimed by another NFL club.

“To my surprise when I showed up this morning to file the paperwork and all that, someone just congratulated me,” the 23-year-old said in a phone interview Sunday afternoon, while still in Houston. “I was like, ‘What for?’ And they were like, ‘Hey, you just got picked up by the Jaguars!’”

Indeed, the Jacksonville Jaguars claimed the former UCLA star off waivers by Sunday’s noon EDT deadline.

Ankou thus joins a fellow undrafted Canadian rookie, tight end Tony Auclair with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, on a 53-man roster heading into Week 1.

Ankou’s reaction?

“I was, like, speechless,” Ankou said. “That was a complete curveball. I was really excited to hear it. That was pretty cool.

“Honestly I had no idea.”

By unfortunate coincidence, though, Ankou’s gain was Stefan Charles’ loss. The Jaguars on Sunday afternoon cut Charles, a fifth-year interior defensive lineman from Toronto, to make room for Ankou.

After starring at the University of Regina, Charles began his NFL career in 2013 as an undrafted free-agent signee of the Tennessee Titans, who soon accepted a mid-season offer from the Buffalo Bills to join their 53-man roster. Charles then earned ample playing time as a backup with the Bills through the 2015 season. He played last season in Detroit as a D-line backup, before signing this past March with the Jaguars.

Boyko (who as a rookie last year spent time with the Philadelphia Eagles and Chargers) rejoins the Los Angeles Chargers and ditto Lokombo with the Baltimore Ravens, teams each had been trying to make for the past four months.

Gray, an undrafted free agent, spent spring practices and training camp with the Green Bay Packers, but he signed Sunday with the New York Jets.

Each NFL team has a practice squad of 10 young players, who train with and practise against active-roster counterparts, in the hope of being promoted to the main roster at some point in the season, or of receiving an offer by any other team at any point to join its 53-man roster.

Neither defensive lineman Mehdi Abdesmad of Montreal (who had training-camp stints this summer with both the Tennessee Titans and Tampa Bay Buccaneers) nor Toronto wide receiver Tevaun Smith (who until reaching an injury settlement with the Indianapolis Colts in late August had been with that team for 16 months) was signed Sunday to any team’s practice squad.

Ankou, the son of a father who emigrated in 1989 from the West African country of Togo and a mother raised on a farm in Field, Ont., was the No. 2 CFL draft prospect. He was born in Ottawa South and raised both there and in the Ottawa suburb of Orleans. In May his hometown Ottawa Red Blacks selected him 26th overall in the third round of the CFL Draft.

On Sunday Ankou said the past week-and-a-half for him has been “completely crazy.”

A week ago Saturday, the day Hurricane Harvey began hammering the Upper Texas Coast in dumping historic amounts of rainfall, the Texans played a preseason game in New Orleans. The Texans couldn’t fly home with airports closed so they flew to Dallas, where the Cowboys permitted the Texans for a few days to use their practice fields and workout facilities. The two teams were due to conclude their preseason schedules against one another in Houston on Thursday. Although the site for the game was quickly relocated to Dallas, by Wednesday the NFL and both teams mutually agreed to cancel the game, so Texans players and staffers could return to their loved ones battling the epic flooding.

The game’s cancellation denied Ankou all the playing time such a down-roster youngster typically would have received in preseason game No. 4.

Ankou did not live in a flooded part of the city, but rather in a team hotel south of downtown.

On Friday, nerves settled in as Ankou and players in his position awaited cutdown Saturday, when NFL clubs would hack their rosters down to 53 from the off-season roster limit of 90.

Shortly after showing up at team headquarters on Saturday morning, Ankou got the initial bad news.

“They called me in. I went through the whole emotions -- you know how it goes. They offered a spot on the practice squad, and that was nice.”

This is how mind-numbing the past week has been for Ankou: he couldn’t recall a few hours later on Sunday who had told him about his lightning bolt of good news regarding Jacksonville, nor with which Jaguars principal he’d spoken to briefly on the phone.

“I forget who it was. It was somebody,” Ankou said. “Honestly, it’s all just a blur. It’s moving very fast! I’m kind of just going through the motions right now. Once I get there, I can get my bearings. I’ve never even been to Jacksonville before.

Ankou said the flooding in Houston provided sights and experiences over the past few days he won’t ever forget.

“I did see areas that were hit hard by flooding, and it was crazy to see in person. To see it on the news first and all that is one thing, then to actually see it all in person -- it was absolutely crazy to me.

“We ended up visiting some people that were affected by the storm at the NRG Center, people who were staying at the shelter there. It was incredible to see the amount of people. But with that being said, a lot of those people were still in good spirits. They were really strong about the situation.

“It’s a tough situation. But I think Houston’s a city that can rebuild and move forward. It’s definitely going to take some time with all that water.”